


Easier to Lie

by stardropdream



Category: xxxHoLic
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 09:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is how she shows she is not broken. This is the truth of Himawari's husband.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easier to Lie

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ January 29, 2011.

  
“Will your husband be coming tomorrow, Himawari-chan? I’m interested in meeting him,” Watanuki says, over the static sound-waves of the telephone.  
  
Himawari closes her eyes, smiling sadly. “No. He’s away on business.”  
  
“It seems he is every year around this time,” Watanuki says. There is no judgment there, only observation.  
  
Himawari keeps her eyes closed and, only with practiced ease of years of lying, manages to keep her voice steady: “He and I have an arrangement about April first.”   
  
“… I see,” Watanuki says, sounding tired.  
  
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Himawari says, and bites back the quiet _I love you_ that bubbles to the tip of her tongue involuntarily. She does not say those words anymore, not since the first time she said so after she’d told Watanuki of the marriage, and he told her that it wasn’t fair to her husband.  
  
They say their goodbyes and hang up. Himawari stands at the telephone for a long moment, until Tanpopo chirps sadly, and tugs on her earlobe. He has gotten larger lately. He no longer can perch only on fingertip, but must take her wrist.   
  
Himawari sighs and pets him, smooth over his sunshine yellow feathers.   
  
She moves through the small, one-bedroom apartment. She does as she does every day. She makes dinner for one, cleans the dishes, draws a bath, and prepares for bed in the small, single-person futon.   
  
It is much easier, now, to show Watanuki that she is okay, that she did not break from his decisions. It was much easier to show that she is strong and can live her life, if he thinks that there is nothing tethering her back to the past.   
  
She closes her eyes, sets the alarm for early. Doumeki will be there early in the morning, and will walk with her to Watanuki’s shop. And like every year, he will ask her what excuse she’d created now for the absent husband. And she will respond, with the same, stainless steel smile, that her husband is away on business. And, like all the years past, he will remind her not to forget her ring, the cheap ring she’d bought for herself and kept in a side drawer in her closet, to wear only once a year.   
  
And for one brief day, she can say she is happy and not be lying.


End file.
